1. Field of the Invention
A harvester apparatus comprising a plurality of discrete stations disposed in operative communication relative to each other on a self-propelled mobile chassis to remove plants from the earth and separate the fruit or vegetable from the stem or vine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Harvesting devices for mechanically severing and conveying plants to a suitable mechanism for separating the fruit from the vines have long been available. Unfortunately, many harvesting devices are not well adapted to certain types of plants. As a result manual harvesting operations continue today. Particularly, tomatoes have been difficult to harvest by machine and only recently have there been proposed automatic harvesting devices for tomato plants.
Even so, several limitations, such as damage and dirt affecting product quality remain. Commonly, mechanical harvesters separate the fruit from the vine by imparting energy to the fruit or vine, so that the inertia of the fruit effects removal. Performance of this type of system is essentially independent of the orientation of the vine with respect to the separator components. The tomato vines are cut off underground, are lifted mechanically from the ground along with some or much dirt, and then the vines are shaken. Since the orientation of the vine is of small consequence in such systems, no attempt is made to control it. The energy imparted to a shaker is transferred to the fruit or vine, and the inertia of the fruit effects removal. Shaking inevitably results in some fruit damage due to this impartation of energy, as the fruit strikes other fruit or parts of the shaking apparatus.
One such harvesting apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,070,944 includes a shaker means for physically separating the vegetable from the vines in combination with a cutting means for severing plants from the ground. The shaker means includes a plurality of endless looped belts in side-by-side relationship, adjacent belts being spaced from each other by a distance sufficient to permit the plant fruit, such as a tomato, to fall therebetween after becoming separated from the vine. The fruit falls to a level below the belts to a suitable collecting means such as a conveyor. The vines are received in a suitable discarding means for disposal. This is then fed to a manual picking table.
Another example is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,398 which discloses a roll set for snapping the vine crop such as the cucumber harvest or the like. The growing vines are severed at the ground and elevated to the snapping rolls that form a nip throat to grasp the vines and pull them through the rolls. The rolls are urged together with considerable force to prevent passage of cucumbers through the rolls. The cucumbers are snapped off the rolls at the nip throat and dropped down into a collector.
Other examples of harvesting devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,436,902; 3,437,151; 3,455,453; 3,457,711; 3,541,979; 3,548,575; 3,566,891 and 3,587,217.
Unfortunately a real need for an efficient, reliable machine which avoids or minimizes damage to the fruit or vegetable still exists.